That the right honourable gentleman can act independently of the Admiralty is clear, he having appointed that clever and courteous officer, Captain Mackenzie, R.N., who was the chief emigration officer at Liverpool, to be harbour-master at Holyhead, thereby rendering it possible to make promotions within the Board of Trade service. We are not of those who look with satisfaction on the appointment of no one but naval officers to survey coasting ships in the Merchant Service. Captain Mackenzie, as a Board of Trade officer in Liverpool, has won golden opinions from everyone-from his colleagues as well as from the public and he receives our sincere congratulations on the honour now conferred on him by Sir Charles Adderley, whose action in this matter has, we hear, quite revived the hopes of officers serving the Board of Trade at the outports. While upon the subject of Holyhead, we regret to have to record the death, on the 29th November last, at the advanced age of seventy-two, of Mr. George Clarisse Dobson, resident engineer to the harbour works from their commencement to their completion in 1873. Previously to his appointment to this post by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, in 1846, he had been employed upon the Plymouth Breakwater, and other engineering enterprises. The long usefulness of lives like Mr. Dobson's, consecrated entirely to the carrying out of lengthy constructions, is often in danger of being overlooked in comparison with more varied or less unobtrusive careers. But many are still alive who will remember his undeviating integrity of purpose, and can recall the pride and courtesy with which, in the earlier and more active days of the works, especially, he explained and exhibited their details to visitors. Mr. Dobson was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, in whose "Proceedings" a memoir of his life will, doubtless, appear.

DESERTERS BEWARE.-In November last, a large ship named the Sarah and Emma sailed from Cardiff, and, what is rather unusual at that port now, four seamen neglected to proceed, after signing articles. In the ordinary way of business, at the Mercantile Marine Office, information was transmitted to the neighbouring ports. Two were detected at Bristol, and one at Newport, by the officers there. The fourth was found at Porthcawl by one of the Cardiff officers, who was conveying a crew on board another vessel then lying at that creek. Rather singularly the whole four were arrested within a few hours of each other. The vessel had sailed, and the owners wisely determined to prosecute them before the Cardiff stipendiary, who committed them all to prison for the usual term. Is the complete network of arrangement for catching crimps and deserters in the Bristol Channel a "nautical affair," according to Mr. Brassey's definition, which only a sailor can arrange, or is it not a piece of official administration that has nothing to do with previous sea service. Whatever it may be it has not been organized by a sailor.

BLOOD-MONEY AT SAN FRANCISCO.-We are sorry once more to have to refer to this subject, which we hoped and thought that the exertions of our Consul and British shipmasters at San Francisco, aided by the cooperation of the United States' Commissioner, had made one of the things of the past. Unfortunately it has turned up again, and much to the discredit of the shipmasters in question, who, it seems, only waited an opportunity to be as bad as the crimps. Before, the scarcity of seamen enabled the crimps to put a price on the head of each seaman supplied, but lately, owing to the farmers holding back their cargoes of wheat, ships have to wait for their loads, and the supply of seamen far exceeds the demand. The desire of turning the tables on the crimps added to the wish to put some money in their pockets, has, it appears, been too much for the honesty of the masters, and they now demand a bonus from the crimps as a douceur for patronising their stores of sailors. Whether it be the crimp who pays the master, or the master the crimp, the result must be equally disastrous to the seaman, or the shipowner, out of whose pockets, in some way, the "bonus" is sure to come. Our Consul, as usual, has not been long in finding out the evil or in trying to remedy it, and has issued the following notice to masters of British ships, pointing out to them the illegality of their conduct, and appealing generously to their sense of right, an appeal which we, with him, do not doubt will be successful :- "To Masters of British Ships.-It has come to my knowledge that several masters of British ships have of late been demanding, and receiving from sailor boarding-house masters, a bonus of from five to ten dollars for each seaman supplied, and as it is an unquestionable fact and self-evident that this bonus is charged to the seamen, the receipt of it is directly contrary to the 148th Section of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, which sets forth that If any person demands or receives, either directly or indirectly, from any seaman or apprentice, or from any person seeking employment as a seaman or apprentice, or from any person on his behalf, any remuneration whatever, other than the fees hereby authorised for providing him with employment, he shall for every such offence incur a penalty not exceeding five pounds.' This action on the part of shipmasters is, I am well satisfied, also contrary to the interests of owners having ships trading to this port; therefore, alike in the protection of those interests, and in the upholding of the law for the protection of seamen, I shall feel it my duty hereafter to endeavour to procure evidence of any such act for transmission to the Committee of Privy Council for Trade, London. I believe it to be only necessary to call the attention of shipmasters to the illegality of the proceeding and the ultimate loss to shipowners thereby, to ensure a discontinuance of it. -WM. L, BOOHEY, Consul, British Consulate, San Francisco, Oct. 9,1874."

THE

NAUTICAL MAGAZINE.

VOLUME XLIV.—No. II.

FEBRUARY, 1875.

SEAL BUTCHERIES.

2N the month of February, 1873, there appeared a letter in the Times, written by Mr. Frank Buckland, calling attention to the ruthless and unnecessarily cruel manner in which the seal fisheries were at present carried on, and pointing out that, unless some steps were taken to prevent wanton and indiscriminate slaughter, there would soon be few, if any, seals left, and that a valuable commercial industry would be seriously affected, if not destroyed. Mr. Buckland stated that, while engaged, two years previously, in examining the salmon fisheries of Scotland, he had had the pleasure of meeting at Peterhead Captain David Gray, commanding officer of the screw steamer Eclipse, one of the principal vessels which sail annually from Scotland in pursuit of whales and seals, and that Captain Gray had informed him that the seals lie like flocks of sheep upon the ice, but that every year they are observedly getting less and less in number. These observations referred only to the seal fishery prosecuted almost entirely by British and Norwegian vessels in the neighbourhood of the island of Jan Mayen, a volcanic mountain rising 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, and they do not apply to either the seal fishery, carried on by the Russians and Americans among the Prybilov Islands, and other islands adjacent to the peninsula of Kamtchatka, nor to that which is or was prosecuted on the rocky shores of New Zealand, in the Crosets, and around Kerguelen Island. They do not apply to the former, because the Russians have wisely adopted the plan of killing only a limited number of such males as have attained their full growth, a plan said to be peculiarly applicable to the fur seal, the Arctocephalus ursinus, as its habits render

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